Have you ever noticed that photos never look as good as real life? You clamor to take a picture of the sunset on your vacation in Miami, only to realize that the photo looks foreign and it doesn’t capture the true essence of the moment. And now, you’ve spent your time looking through a screen at a moment you wanted to capture–but the memory is now you looking through the screen. Weird, huh?

What if you simply enjoyed the sunset without taking a picture? Staying in the present moment is one thing, but that’s only part of the story. The other part is letting go of the moment when it changes. Anger, sadness, desire: these are things that arise in the mind, but it’s only the mind. The mind is not reality. It’s as if you let a movie tell you how to have breakfast; the movie is just representing one version of reality, and it’s not a true statement. Are you going to let a black box tell you what reality is and isn’t like?

The opposite of listening to your mind is listening without your mind. What does it feel like to tune into a thoughtless mind, see a thought arise, acknowledge that it has arisen, and then tune back into the thoughtless mind? When you let go of your thoughts, let go of your preferences, let go of the way you think things should be, you let go of suffering. You release the stories that bind you to the past and future. How much anger do you feel when you’re completely absorbed in a joyful task like birdwatching or doing your favorite exercise? This is the state the meditators aspire to be in all the time. It’s not because it “feels good,” though it does. It’s because you transcend the suffering around you when you merge with it. As Thich Nhat Hnan says, “Enlightenment is when the wave realizes it is the ocean.” Merge with reality and you leave behind suffering.

Let’s take a concrete example. As I’m writing these words, I’m not thinking about what I’m going to have for breakfast. I’m not thinking about who is going to read these words or if they are going to like them. The world is, instead, reduced to a clean simplicity: tap each key to form strings of letters. That’s all I’m doing. I might have a thought on how to rephrase a word, but it’s not a thought about the 2024 election or Bulgarian cuisine. In a sense, my entire world is this moment.

When you do this, everything else fades away. The world takes on a feeling of Wholeness and ease, even in the midst of emotional conflict. Relaxing into the ebb and flow of cosmic events allows us to truly step into this world, one tiny miracle task at a time.

I don’t need anything from this moment. I’m not trying to “get” anything. I’m simply plodding along, attempting to do my tasks that I’d like to do. If I can do my tasks, then I continue with more tasks. If I can’t do my tasks because of some unforeseen obstacle, I embody the ant on the kitchen floor: find another way around or switch to a different task. I don’t throw up my hands and say, “This is such a terrible day!” Instead, I simply accept that some things will work out and others won’t.

And if something doesn’t work out, I see it not as evidence of punishment, but instead that these are now the facts that I need to consider. If I plan to go on a picnic by a riverside, but the river bank is flooded, I adapt. I don’t cling to the idea that the picnic was what I needed–”I planned it for so long and this just isn’t fair!”–but instead redirect my energy to other solutions: I find a different river bank, I sit further away from the river, or I go home.

Act with the facts you have. Whatever happens, plod along, ready for whatever else comes your way.